Sunday, February 28, 2010

Bread

Koreans are good at making many things. They excel at making cheap electronics that break easily, rude ignorant people, soju ( a disgusting beverage made from old sweet potatoes, rice and hatred), kimchi, and... well, really that's about it. One thing they definitely cannot make is bread.

I have tried several types of bread made in Korea, the first disappointment was garlic bread. Add garlic and oil to bread. Simple and delicious. Korean logic dictates that if something tastes good, it will always taste better with copious amounts of sugar added to it. The sugary garlic frosting taste from that foul loaf still haunts my dreams.

We also purchased a loaf of "Whole grain" bread we found its sweet taste and almost non-existent texture to be similar to wonder bread. When used to make a sandwich it melted into a soggy mess that stuck to my teeth and gums. I might as well have made a sandwich out of cake batter.

The problem is, they add milk to all their breads (we learned this later). Milk is not a bread ingredient. Forget that I am vegan, and that I don't consume dairy anyway. The only ingredients you need are flour, yeast, water, and salt if you want to be fancy.

As a carb addict, and since I cannot buy a decent loaf of whole wheat bread in this heathen country, I am forced to make my own bread. All I do is add one tablespoon of yeast to 3 cups of water, mix in roughly 6 cups of flour and let it sit overnight, that will make about 2 loaves of bread. The next day, or day after I kneed half the dough for about five minutes, and then bake it for about 30-40 minutes at as high as your oven will go.

This is what a real loaf of bread looks like.

There you go, whole wheat crusty goodness that fills your belly, and does not melt into mush when you make a sandwich.

@KRD, yes why indeed?@WTF, its definitely possible, I got lucky with an oven in my apartment, I have a friend who had to buy one. I think he said it was somewhere around 100 or 200 won. The yeast is at homeplus, and probably e-mart. I could not find it in the town I live in. Everywhere has flour. @alex, because of the bread pics, or because of the topless pics?

I always got a laugh out of people (apologists and koreaphiles) telling me Koreans don't like sweet foods. Then I would see them (Koreans) scarfing down bread filled with sweet cream or custard. Or sweet garlic bread (almost puled when I ate that.) Or buying roast potatoes on the street with SUGAR on them. Or hearing about them eating sugar on tomatoes. Ugh. Gave up bread for a while here now I can find some ok stuff.